stood there
looking cheerless, vacant, and miserable. Everything had been carried
away except the little box, which from an uncertainty what was to be
done with it, had been left in the middle of the room. Ottilie was lying
stretched upon the ground, her arm and head leaning across the cover.
Charlotte bent anxiously over her, and asked what had happened; but she
received no answer.

Her maid had come with restoratives. Charlotte left her with Ottilie,
and herself hastened back to Edward. She found him in the saloon, but he
could tell her nothing.

He threw himself down before her; he bathed her hands with tears; he
flew to his own room, and she was going to follow him thither, when she
met his valet. From this man she gathered as much as he was able to
tell. The rest she put together in her own thoughts as well as she
could, and then at once set herself resolutely to do what the exigencies
of the moment required. Ottilie's room was put to rights again as
quickly as possible; Edward found his, to the last paper, exactly as he
had left it.

The three appeared again to fall into some sort of relation with one
another. But Ottilie persevered in her silence, and Edward could do
nothing except entreat his wife to exert a patience which seemed wanting
to himself. Charlotte sent messengers to Mittler and to the Major. The
first was absent from home and could not be found. The latter came. To
him Edward poured out all his heart, confessing every most trifling
circumstance to him, and thus Charlotte learnt fully what had passed;
what it had been which had produced such violent excitement, and how so
strange an alteration of their mutual position had been brought about.

She spoke with the utmost tenderness to her husband. She had nothing to
ask of him, except that for the present he would leave the poor girl to
herself. Edward was not insensible to the worth, the affection, the
strong sense of his wife; but his passion absorbed him exclusively.
Charlotte tried to cheer him with hopes. She promised that she herself
would make no difficulties about the separation; but it had small effect
with him. He was so much shaken that hope and faith alternately forsook
him. A species of insanity appeared to have taken possession of him. He
urged Charlotte to promise to give her hand to the Major. To satisfy him
and to humor him, she did what he required. She engaged to become
herself the wife of the Major, in the event of Ottilie consent